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I have an old, large staghorn fern; the shield fronds cover a ball of about one foot diameter. Moved it to the shaded deck last month. Today when I injected water into the ball with a syringe ( routine), many tiny ants came out. Locally these are called "sugar ants". They are about 2 mm long. They do not appear to be causing any damage.

blacksmith37
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When grown indoors the most common problem for staghorn ferns is scale. I never managed to control scale on a plant like this due to the large surface area with many parts where control agents like soap can't reach. Whether these ants cultivate scale is unknown but ants inside your plant inside your house is another problem.

So, there is the possibility the ants will bring scale to the plant or start living inside your house.

kevinskio
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  • Good tip ; it had bad scale 2 years ago and is still recovering. I will check for scale. I cleared scale by removing them from each leaf with fingernail ; about 50 leaves. – blacksmith37 May 05 '22 at 16:11
  • Very good tip; I found scale on some fronds but not all as they recently started. I looked about a month ago when I took it outside, maybe I did not look close enough. – blacksmith37 May 05 '22 at 17:45